Wristcutters: A Love Story - deleted scenes, making of - good, but very short... < edit > plus I've now watched the commentary with director, 2 producers and star. It was alright, pretty jovial, but nothing too exiting. Except it pointed something out I hadn't been aware of when I watched the film - almost all songs on the soundtrack are from bands who've had a member commit sucide...

I've just finished watching all the special features on the LOTR: EE and i found it really interesting, some of it went on for a bit too long but overall it was good. I was amazed at just how much detail they put into everything.

as for me, i watched the 35th Anniversary doc on the Deliverance - Deluxe Edition, one of my fav. movies, i owned the vanilla disk for awhile but had to upgrade. Fantastic stuff, it isn't too long but its very informative and includes all the main cast, director, and even the son of late write James Dickey.

If you're a fan of the film and still own the vanilla version, i definatly recommend the upgrade, i've seen the Deluxe Edition on sale for £3 in some shops, get it.

Die Hard 4 - watched everything on the 2 disk edition, good stuff. Any of the extra's with Justin Long are worth a viewing, very funny. The hour and half doc. is pretty tech heavy, but interesting all the same. Cracking honest conversation between Willis and Kevin Smith and a few other featurettes.

only thing missing is a commentary of any kind.

Well worth getting the 2 disker if you're a fan of the series...i aint actually seen it in any many stores, seems to be the 1 disker everywhere.

Die Hard 4 - watched everything on the 2 disk edition, good stuff. Any of the extra's with Justin Long are worth a viewing, very funny. The hour and half doc. is pretty tech heavy, but interesting all the same. Cracking honest conversation between Willis and Kevin Smith and a few other featurettes.

only thing missing is a commentary of any kind.

Well worth getting the 2 disker if you're a fan of the series...i aint actually seen it in any many stores, seems to be the 1 disker everywhere.

Flash Point: The Bey Logan & Donnie Yen commentary. Is it better when Logan has someone with him? Yes and no. There's less of the rapid-fire info, but the trade-off is you get some insight from someone actually involved in the film.

Speaking of Logan, I was editing Wiki today and realised that with his recent one for the Dragon Dynasty release of Tai Chi Master, he's now done 100 film commentaries...

Am about three quarters of the way through Dangerous Days, the Blade Runner Making of doc. Excellent. Ridley Scott was really battling everyone to get this film made. Haven't got the bit yet of who gets the blame for the initial crap happy ending.

Flash Point - the extras disc. Most of the featurettes are like extended trailers, with a few talking heads briefly talking about their characters, and loads of scenes lifted from the film. And the 30 minute Flash Point Explored is basically just a slightly longer version of the 20 minute Making Of. The deleted scenes are minimal and nothing special, and the MMA featurette demonstrating 3 moves is really quite pointless.

The most interesting extra by far is the 30 minute Donnie Yen interview, which is more candid and less of an advertisement. He talks about his style, the nature of current Hong Kong action films, the injuries sustained during the shoot etc.

There was really no need to fill a disc with an hour plus of quite dull viewing. If they'd left it at the film, the commentary and the DY interview, they could have fit it on one disc and I'd have been more than happy.

Imported the danish special editions, watched the hour long Confessions documentary on Dogville and Lars von Trier and Anthony Dod Mantle commentary on both of them and the documentary segment on von Trier on the BTW disks. Fantastic stuff, espcially seeing the cast slowly turn on Lars throughout the Dogville shoot and then praise him as a genius by the end, the bits involving Ben Gazzara and Paul Bettany are gold.

Evil Dead Trilogy

Went through all the Raimi/Campbell commentaries again and the "Gore the Merrier" doc on Evil Dead II. As far as great DVD commentaries go, these are still top of the bunch for me. I found out Anchor Bay released yet again another "Ultimate Edition" in the states of the original, though there is quite a lot of new material so I can't help but import that shit. I'm a fucking sucker for Raimi man.

Is there a thread about DVD extras or is this it ? I'm looking for some info and opinions on Special Editions and what not and wether or not the extras are even worth it ? Untouchables? Mean Streets? Goodfellas ? Get Shorty ? Raging Bull ?

Is there a thread about DVD extras or is this it ? I'm looking for some info and opinions on Special Editions and what not and wether or not the extras are even worth it ? Untouchables? Mean Streets? Goodfellas ? Get Shorty ? Raging Bull ?

Well, if there is one, this ain't it. This is just where people mention what extras they've watched recently, sometimes with opinions on the merits of those extras. You'd probably be better off starting a new thread in this forum if you have questions pertaining to specific extras.

Of those you mention, I only own Goodfellas (the 2 disc SE), and to be honest I can't really remember how good most of the extras were. The only thing I can say, from memory, is that the two commentaries were both pretty decent, but then again, I might be the wrong person to respond anyway. When I buy DVDs, if I don't like the film, I sell it without watching the extras. If I do like the film, I will eventually get round to watching any and all extras (otherwise what's the point getting special editions)...

Anyway, back to the thread proper:

I recently watched all the interviews on the first 4 volumes of Mushi-shi - that's one solo with the genial, affable director Nagahama Hiroshi, and 7 with the director talking to various members of the crew. All interviews were between about 15 and 25 mins each. Whilst not massively interesting or entertaining, they did provide some insight, and were all relaxed, good natured affairs.

I watched the second disc of extras on the Passion of the Christ . I was hoping in vain for some sort of interesting debate or response to crticism from Mel. Sadly no. The extras just bash home what the movie does... all that stuff about how he died for us et cetera. There's one brief mention about the marketing of the film, Mel and his boys talk about how the film was black listed before it was released and how they hit back by taking the film out on the road. This part of the making of the film really seems to portray the makers and Mel as having brought the film out to the people and critics of the film, but in fact no I think they just brought it to churches and evangelists - the only people who didn't lambaste the picture!

Shame, there could have been a really good documentary there but there's nothing to address the key issues that the film was charged with, well the one key issue with regards it being anti-semetic.

The Exorcist: Havn't listened to commentaries but I watched the interviews and the doucmentary "Fear of God". It's a documentary in teh sense that it documents annecdotes and stories through talking heads but it's a bit of an amateur affair. I'm sure that when it was first released way back (in 1998 or'99) it was one of the first extras packed discs and I know that it was in Empire's top 100 list first time around. I just don't think it's that well put together. The stories I was aware of already aren't that interesting second time around.... The one recurring message you can take from it is "Friedkin's a cunt".

I watched the bonus discs for Alien 3 and Ressurection today. I've had this box set for years, since it came out in fact and I've only ever watched the extras for the first one.

I've known or been aware of the troubles Fincher had on number 3 but never knew specific details about why the production was so flawed. I like a good solid documentary with a start/middle and end when it comes to dvds. I've never been a fan of the short featurette option, but with the alien dvds there was a play all option much like the LotR which I thought was good. I thought that for the most part the frankness about how Fincher was screwed over was interesting, and the honesty of the producers saying that he didn't have a script was commendable as usually you'd think such secrets would be locked away. But I suppose everyone knew there was no script! The lack of input from Fincher was a shame but also there's very little from Weaver either. There was some on set stuff from Weaver and another few soundbites but as with most of the interviews you couldn't quite tell if all they were newly shot or what. The main grip I had was with the post-production side of the featurettes. I wanted to know specifically how much Fincher had to do with the editing and at what point did he decide to abort the project and forget about trying to get his vision across and when did the studio or producers step in and edit it themselves.... This is left out and there's not really much talk about how 3 has fared over the years and there's hardly any remorse from any of the main players involved, especially considering that Fincher's gone on to much bigger and better things.

If the documentaries of number 3 was lacking some perspective and in the end some redemption then Alien Ressurection went in a totally different direction! Everyone is interviewed, even the underwater DoP and the underwater sequence is given about 30 minutes! Juenet exudes confidence in his completed film. Absolutely everyone is overly enthusiastic about the film and the direction it took and how it had breathed new life into the series. Even the effects guys wax lyrical about their designs for the "new born" and the deformed Alien/Ripley abortions. It's actually hilarious, you have to see it, they all are convinced that they've made a modern classic! There's a tiny little tacked on bit at the end about the critical reception and eh, even though it was the worst of the series theyre all still super positive and kissing the preverbial ass. It's also amusing to see the interview with Winona Ryder in which she says that the underwater scenes were the hardest and scariest thing in her life. Kind of funny in retrospect after her ahem "role rehearsal" in that clothes shop. Again Weaver's comments seem to be from archive stuff in which she takes her role as the veteran of the Alien series and leader who the other actors looked up.

Oh and there's a whole bit on the basketball shot that she did on the 6th take.

If I was reviewing these extras for quality I'd have to give Alien 3 three stars and Ressurection 2stars. I've not watched the Aliens extras yet. Fingers crossed

The Wire S5 - the just-shy-of-an-hour's worth of extras, and the first 2.5 (of 6) episode commentaries.

Ok, but a little dry to be honest. I really thought they should have tried to get more cast members in for the commos on this season - like more of them in the room at the time, to gee it up a bit and let some varied characters have something to say. It would have been great to have a commentary with Marlo, Chris and Snoop, or one with McNulty, Freamon and Bunk, for example.

The Wire S5: Watched / listened to another 1.5 commentaries (2 to go).

Also watched all of the extras from the films in the Shaolin Kung Fu Master Collection boxset, namely: Five Shaolin Masters, Executioners from Shaolin, Shaolin Temple, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Return to the 36th Chamber, The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter, Disciples of the 36th Chamber and Martial Arts of Shaolin. Each disc has some basic extras, the pick of which being the captioned behind-the-scenes image galleries. Each disc also has about 4 or 5 trailers for other Shaw Brothers films, some of which are just for the 36th Chambers films, but the others are quite interesting and varied, from the likes of Boxer From Shantung and The Iron Bodyguard, to romance films, and a couple that look just plain mental including the Hong Kong rip-off of King Kong - Mighty Peking Man.

4 of the discs contain interviews / featurettes (including one pretty dull one on bamboo scaffolding), each around 15 mins or less, and it's a shame they didn't do this for all 8 discs.

Mushi-shi Vol 5 - The interview with director Nagahama Hiroshi and the four series colourists. As previously, not very deep, but good natured.

Legend of a Fighter - The interview with Yuen Woo-ping was a straight copy of one from another HKL release, so as soon as I realised it, I halted that. Watched the interview with star Leung Kar Yan - a little strange as he seemed to be quite annoyed with the interviewers questions. They were inane at times - Q: "So, is Sammo Hung a good action director?" A: "Yes."